U.S.-Cuba: Where Things Stand

U.S.-Cuban negotiations aimed at restoring full diplomatic relations between the two formerly hostile countries have seemingly stalled once again. The latest round of high-level talks, held at the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C. over the course of several days last week, reportedly failed to produce significant progress, and formal mutual embassies in the American and Cuban capitals remain unopened.

Thanks to several recent breakthroughs in the diplomatic normalization process, including President Barack Obama’s decision last month to remove Cuba from the U.S. State Department’s infamous list of state sponsors of terrorism and the Cuban government’s resulting acquisition of much-needed banking services for its U.S. diplomatic mission with the Florida-based Stonegate Bank, the opening of embassies in Washington and Havana in the very near future seemed like a viable possibility ahead of last week’s talks. That said, American and Cuban negotiators in D.C. were unable to overcome critical disagreements over the degree of freedom that U.S. diplomats operating in Cuba should be afforded.

The Cuban government argues that the journalism training courses and information technology that American personnel at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana regularly provide to Cuban dissidents is illegal, specifically violating a Vienna Conventions ban on diplomats meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. They demand an immediate end to the practice and also want to maintain existing restrictions on Cuban-based U.S. diplomats’ freedom to travel outside of Havana. Persistent discord between American and Cuban negotiators over these contentious issues effectively neutralized last week’s talks in Washington.

Speaking to the press in the wake of the most recent negotiations, Roberta Jacobson, the U.S. State Department’s top official for Latin America, stressed the need for Cuba to conform to her country’s standards of diplomatic procedure: “There are a range of ways in which our embassies operate around the world in different countries…We expect that in Cuba, our embassy will operate within that range. It won’t be unique. It won’t be anything that that doesn’t exist elsewhere in the world.”

The authoritarian Castro regime, which strictly prohibits most types of subversive media in Cuba, is justifiably fearful that certain American diplomatic, aid and intelligence staff operating in Cuba are bent on fomenting anti-government sentiment among the population of the Caribbean island. The U.S. has a well-documented history of relentlessly attempting to oust the Castro government since it took power in 1959, and provoking a regime change or, at the very least, reform in Havana remains an avowed central goal of White House’s current diplomatic normalization and democratization efforts in Cuba.

Though the most recent round of negotiations between the U.S. and Cuba appear to have been decidedly unimpactful, representatives of both governments were optimistic about the overall progress of U.S.-Cuban diplomatic normalization in their statements to the press following the meeting. Furthermore, they refused to write off the talks as a failure. Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s director of North American affairs, called the negotiations “respectful and professional,” while Jacobson described them as “highly productive.” Neither party was willing to go into detail about substance of the negotiations.